As is well known, the Hopi maidens wear their hair in two whorls, one
over each ear, and that on their marriage it is tied in two coils
falling on the breast. The whorl is arranged on a U-shape stick called
a _gñela_; it is commonly done up by a sister, the mother, or some
friend of the maiden, and is stiffened with an oil pressed from squash
seeds. The curved stick is then withdrawn and the two puffs held in
place by a string tightly wound between them and the head. The habit
of dressing the hair in whorls is adopted after certain puberty
ceremonials, which have elsewhere been described. When on betrothal a
Hopi maid takes her gifts of finely ground cornmeal to the house of
her future mother-in-law, her hair is dressed in this fashion for the
last time, because on her return she is attacked by the women of the
pueblo, drawn hither and thither, her hair torn down, and her body
smeared with dirt. If her gifts are accepted she immediately becomes
the wife of her lover, and her hair is thenceforth dressed in the
fashion common to matrons.
The symbolic meaning of the whorls of hair worn by the maidens is said
to be the squash-flower, or, perhaps more accurately speaking, the
potential power of fructification. There is legendary and other
evidence that this custom is very ancient among the Tusayan Indians,
and the data obtainable from their ritual point the same way. In the
personification of ancestral "breath-bodies," or spirits by men,
called _katcinas_, the female performers are termed _katcina-manas_
(katcina-virgins), and it is their custom to wear the hair in the
characteristic coiffure of maidens. In the personification of the
Corn-maid by symbolic figures, such as graven images,[122] pictures,
and the like, in secret rites, the style of coiffure worn by the
maidens is common, as I have elsewhere shown in the descriptions of
the ceremonials known as the Flute, _Lalakonti_, _Mamzrauti_,
_Palülükoñti_, and others. The same symbol is found in images used as
dolls of Calako-mana, the equivalent, as the others, of the same
Corn-maid. From the nature of these images there can hardly be a doubt
of the great antiquity of this practice, and that it has been brought
down, through their ritual, to the present day. This style of hair
dressing was mentioned by the early Spanish explorers, and is
represented in pictographs of ancient date; but if all these evidences
of its antiquity are insufficient the testimony afforded by the
pictures on certain food-basins from Sikyatki leaves no doubt on this
point.[123]
Plate CXXIX, _b_, represents a food-basin, on the inside of which is
drawn, in brown, the head and shoulders of a woman. On either side the
hair is done up in coils which bear some likeness to the whorls worn
by the present Hopi maidens. It must be borne in mind, however, that
similar coils are sometimes made after ceremonial head-washing, and
certain other rites, when the hair is tied with corn husks. The face
is painted reddish, and the ears have square pendants similar to the
turquois mosaics worn by Hopi women at the present day. Although there
is other evidence than this of the use of square ear-pendants, set
with mosaic, among the ancient people--and traditions point the same
way--this figure of the head of a woman from Sikyatki leaves no doubt
of the existence of this form of ornament in that ancient pueblo.
However indecisive the last-mentioned picture may be in regard to the
coiffure of the ancient Sikyatki women, plate CXXIX, _a_, affords
still more conclusive evidence. This picture represents a woman of
remarkable form which, from likenesses to figures at present made in
sand on an altar in the _Lalakonti_ ceremony,[124] I have no
hesitation in ascribing to the Corn-maid. The head has the two whorls
of hair very similar to those made in that rite on the picture of the
Goddess of Germs, and the square body is likewise paralleled in the
same figure. The peculiar form is employed to represent the
outstretched blanket, a style of art which is common in Mayan
codices.[125] On each lower corner representations of feathered
strings, called in the modern ritual _nakwákwoci_,[126] are appended.
The figure is represented as kneeling, and the four parallel lines are
possibly comparable with the prayer-sticks placed in the belt of the
Germ goddess on the _Lalakonti_ altar. In her left hand (which, among
the Hopi, is the ceremonial hand or that in which sacred objects are
always carried) she holds an ear of corn, symbolic of germs, of which
she is the deity. The many coincidences between this figure and that
used in the ceremonials of the September moon, called Lalakonti, would
seem to show that in both instances it was intended to represent the
same mythic being.
There is, however, another aspect of this question which is of
interest. In modern times there is a survival among the Hopi of the
custom of decorating the inside of a food basin with a figure of the
Corn-maid, and this is, therefore, a direct inheritance of ancient
methods represented by the specimen under consideration. A large
majority of modern food bowls are ornamented with an elaborate figure
of Calako-mana, the Corn-maid, very elaborately worked out, but still
retaining the essential symbolism figured in the Sikyatki bowl.[127]
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY